%{}% About 10 miles separate chef and restaurateur Shanita McAfee’s original Magnolia’s Contemporary Southern Bistro, at 2932 Cherry, from her uncompleted new venue, at 9916 Holmes. Yet the two spaces seem worlds apart. When McAfee opened her first restaurant in a cramped, 55-seat space in 2012, she was doing most of the cooking herself in a kitchen hardly bigger than…
%{}% It’s been a big week for East Coast establishment media exploring civilization in flyover country. Yesterday, The New York Times dropped a lengthy tome about this year’s wacky Kansas legislative session and how it went on far too long. Wichita House member Gene Suellentrop’s nephew, normally a video-game writer, penned the story in the first person. It’s not especially revelatory…
Billy Mitchell is not an underdog. He was the standard bearer of classic arcade gaming — the champion Donkey Kong player featured in 2007 documentary, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. Mitchell, with his dark mullet, beard and American flag tie, is a winner in the world of arcade gaming. Saturday night, he’ll be at Screenland Armour (408…
As if Spotify didn’t consume enough of our workday hours, the music-streaming website has now developed a new time waster fascinating diversion: “Musical Map,” in which Spotify, mining its vast resources of data and insights (hey, all that user info has to go somewhere, right?), determines the top songs in a given city. From Spotify’s super-duper user-friendly page explaining Musical Map: You…
The Latenight Callers seem like a Kansas City institution at this point, and that’s an impressive achievement for a band which started as a DIY recording project just six years ago. Their sultry sound is best suited to — well, suits and skirts, for one thing. Wearing shorts and a t-shirt while seeing this gloriously-bedecked foursome play some dimly-lit spot…
Throughout this month, the Flying Saucer will celebrate women in craft beer with a series of events. It all starts tonight at 7 with a tapping of Founders All Day BliS Blast at the restaurant (101 E. 13th St.). Founders rep Ashley Krull will be in attendance to talk about the beer, which you can only get in Kansas City…
%{}% Johnson County commissioners are little over a week away from voting on a property-tax increase — the first of the county’s kind since 2006. Counting noses on the seven-member commission, it seems likely that a majority will approve a 3.3 increase to the county’s mill levy. Hannes Zacharias, Johnson County manager, originally proposed a 1.6 mill levy increase to…
%{}% Tim Coppinger — the Mission Hills resident accused by the Federal Trade Commission last September of running an illegal online-payday-lending scheme that bilked consumers out of tens of millions of dollars — settled his lawsuit with the feds last month. As The Pitch has reported, Coppinger was just one player in an ecosystem of predatory lending that thrived locally…
Natasha Goellner, one of Kansas City’s busiest young confectioners, says she needs a vacation. Not a long vacation, but definitely some time off. That’s why the co-owner of Natasha’s Mulberry & Mott (which she owns with her mother, Vicki) recently declined to sign another lease on her “temporary” location at 320 Ward Parkway and will close that retail space, the former…
THURSDAY, AUGUST 6Tapping of Rauchbier (Märzen-style lager with smoked malt), at KC Bier Co. (310 W. 79th St.), 4 p.m. International IPA day tapping of Founders BLiS Blast All Day IPA (exclusive KC release) with Ashley Krull, at Flying Saucer (101 E. 13th St.), 7 p.m. Torn Label Bitter Summer cask tapping, at Green Room Burgers & Beer (4010 Pennsylvania),…
%{}% This morning, a diner at the compact Jerry’s Cafe, at 1209 West 103rd Street, walked over to the table where Nick DeFeo was sitting with his parents. “I understand that you’re the new owner here,” the man said. “Please don’t change anything. It’s perfect like it is.” DeFeo, the 34-year-old former cook at the former M&S Grill (and, still,…
Kansas City is crown-crazy, and the 2015 edition of The Pitch’s Best of Kansas City issue is no exception. This year, we’re asking you to chase the crown and vote for the best of the best in six categories. The first round of voting is now open through Wednesday, August 26. We’ll tabulate your votes, narrow the list to the top…
On its face, Woody Allen’s latest film is so fundamentally uninspired that a viewer almost immediately begins looking for subtext. Most likely, this isn’t the result of a genuine desire to discover greater resonance in the text, as much as it is a strategy against boredom. Irrational Man is a rather rote assemblage of late Allen tropes, particularly the bourgeois…
Last year, Peter Schlamb released Tinks, an album of high-energy, original compositions built on electric vibraphone. It’s a phenomenal record, with tracks that stretch the definition of jazz into a mesmerizing modern funk. Schlamb’s concise arrangements twist and explode with delight. Friday night, he brings his Electric Tinks band to the staid 1940s charm of the Green Lady Lounge. With…
%{}% Shania Twain Friday night’s Sprint Center show may be your last opportunity to see Shania Twain in concert. The ’90s country superstar and singer of the megahit “Man! I Feel Like a Woman” has declared that her Rock This Country tour — her first in 11 years — is her last, as she slides into retirement at 49 years…
%{}% Since 2003, Jeffrey Stolz and Wallace Cochran have made music together as Drakkar Sauna, an oddball folk act specializing in songs with fantastical, sometimes extraterrestrial plots. The band’s most recent album, 2009’s 20009 — pronounced two-thousand-ousand-nine — is hard evidence of the duo’s weird ways. And though it has been six long years since Stolz and Cochran put out…
%{}% The entrance to Indyground Entertainment is prominently labeled but easy to miss. Located on a small strip at the intersection of 39th Street and Broadway, it’s a black door that bears the hip-hop label’s insignia and is smushed between Grimm Tattoo and the awning for the consignment clothing shop Loop KC. Beyond the door is a show-poster-lined hall leading…
%{}% In her nearly 45-year career, Pam Grier has often seemed less like an actress and more like an alchemist, turning unpromising material into gold. Since her breakthrough role in Jack Hill’s 1971 women-in-prison movie, The Big Doll House, Grier has taken on racial stereotypes, sexism, the drug trade, arms dealers, genocidal Martians and garish ’70s fashion — and usually…
%{}% Gilda Radner was just 42 when she died of ovarian cancer in 1989. An original cast member of Saturday Night Live (1975–80), she developed memorably hilarious characters: Roseanne Roseannadanna, Emily Litella, and the Barbara Walters parody Baba Wawa. For those who remember her well — and those not so familiar — local actress and theater teacher Helena Cosentino recalls…
In 2013, not long after John McDonald sold Boulevard Brewing Co., he purchased an old fire station in the East Bottoms, at the corner of Guinotte and Montgall avenues. He had sentimental reasons: The firehouse was built in 1903 by the Heim Brewing Co., the largest beer maker in Kansas City at the turn of the last century — the…
The magic of the Margarita cocktail, they say, is in the tequila. The beverage, a combination of tequila, triple sec, and fresh lemon or lime juice, has become one of the best-selling mixed drinks in America over the last half-century for both its potency and its kaleidoscope of tastes: sweet, salty, tart, citrusy and cold. This Friday, August 7, fans…
We have discussed before the profound irrelevance of Internet lists about cities. Few rely on primary reporting, most use thin statistics interpreted by unqualified writers (some don’t even use statistics) and all are intent on soaking up your homerism and converting it into advertising revenue. Worst of all, supposedly legitimate media operations, desperate for the very same advertising revenue, post…
%{}% Chef Joe Shirley has a new job, one with a unique name: “happenings director” for the Uptown Theater (3700 Broadway). Shirley, who lost his full-time job in May when the Kansas City Club suddenly closed, has been supporting his family by catering private events and producing inventive temporary pop-up “restaurants” under his three-year-old Uberdine brand. But he needed a commercial…
